RUTH PADEL

RUTH PADEL

Ruth is an award-winning British poet and writer, Poetry Fellow at King’s College London, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Council Member for the Zoological Society of London.

Her tenth poetry collection, Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth is shortlisted for the 2014 T. S. Eliot Prize. Its poems on the Middle East trace a quest for harmony in the midst of destruction. “A meditation on conflict and history like the ending of Little Gidding without the mono-culturalism.” (Independent) “Wonderful, audacious and minutely crafted. The magnificent central section about the crucifixion is an imaginative feat, and her command of register is masterly, moving from formal to conversational with graceful authority.” (Observer)

She teaches Poetry at Kings College London and has published nine poetry collections, a novel, and eight books of non-fiction including three on reading poetry. Her recent book The Mara Crossing/ ON MIGRATION is a mixed-genre meditation on migration in prose and poetry. Her awards include First Prize in the UK National Poetry Competition, a Cholmondeley Award from The Society of Authors, an Arts Council of England Writers’ Award and a British Council Darwin Now Research Award for her novel Where the Serpent Lives. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Member of the Bombay Natural History Society, Ambassador for New Networks for Nature, Patron of 21st-Century Tiger and Council Member of the Zoological Society of London.